I spent Saturday at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland learning why we need to replace California's terrible youth prisons with local rehabilitation facilities for our incarcerated youth. It costs much less per youth, dramatically lowers the recidivism rate and is much more humane. So if we are to close the big corporate youth prisons we will need financing for the dozens of small rehab centers that will replace them. Who could help with this project? Why not some of the financiers such as the ones who got rich off of mortgage credit swaps and derivatives? They certainly know their financing, and their reputations could use some restoration. It could be an Americorps for financiers.
And there are other projects that could use their expertise.
Why not create public/private financing for solar panel factories in inner cities? Wind generator manufacturing in Detroit? The stimulus money is out there; the public will for clean energy jobs is out there; what is often lacking is the expertise to actually get the money to the right place at the right time.
This program could be marketed to financiers with a conscience (if such a thing exists). The appeal would be to pay back of some of what they took from the community. It would be similar to pro-bono, or tithing. Or in some cases, for financiers who have been actually committed a crime, a judge could sentence them to community service doing this good work. Like picking up the garbage on the side of the road as payment for a speeding ticket.